Kirk Mastin
They absorb the angst, suffering and frustration of millions living in India's maximum city.
15/12/2016 1:27 AM IST
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Zakir was 17 when he started coughing. He was in Delhi, working as an embroiderer after running away from home. He lived and worked with 25 other embroiderers in a single room in the Kotla Mubarkpur area. Zakir's story is the story of thousands of migrants in India's urban cities. With crowded living and working conditions, as well as poor nutrition, TB creeps up on them and often remains undetected.
19/07/2016 7:17 PM IST
Beck Diefenbach / Reuters
It's important not to reduce this conversation to the banalities of religion, gun control and terror. These are, of course, important issues and deeply linked to this crime. However, it's crucial to recognize this as a hate crime -- one that shakes humanity but most deeply affects us, the LGBTI community.
14/06/2016 8:28 AM IST
MONEY SHARMA via Getty Images
The government should understand that in a nation <em>born</em> of sedition, a charge of sedition is perhaps the most inspiring call you can give us. Using words like sedition betray your colonial and intellectually narrow mindsets. Both JNU and India will survive this shrieking, hysterical nationalist witch-hunt. If anything, a more liberal, resilient India will emerge with deeper commitment towards diversity and inclusiveness.
24/02/2016 7:09 AM IST
DIBYANGSHU SARKAR via Getty Images
On the eve of World AIDS Day, which falls on 1 December, a shocking statement from the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) said it was not feasible to provide free ART (lifesaving medicines for HIV infected) to all patients as per the new WHO guidelines. How can this be justified in a country where more than 2 million people are HIV-infected and millions others remain at risk?
08/12/2015 8:23 AM IST
narendramodiofficial/Flickr
In India, our politicians and actors often serve the same purpose -- primarily to lull us into a world of make believe. They create a fictitious world, if only momentarily, where truth defeats evil and the balance in the universe is ultimately restored. Sometimes, though rarely, our reel heroes become real life ones with acts of courage and bravery. This is almost never witnessed in our political class, which is almost always theatrical, noisy and rhetorical, with little substance.
12/11/2015 8:17 AM IST
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds via Getty Images
The discovery of Totally Drug-resistant Tuberculosis (TDR-TB) brought home the realisation that Mumbai was in a TB crisis. In response, the Mumbai Mission for TB Control was formed, its multi-pronged strategy focusing on proactively finding new cases in slums, creating access to rapid TB diagnosis ( including testing everyone for drug resistance), improving access to correct treatment and extending these services and support to providers and patients in the private sector.
23/10/2015 7:51 AM IST
ASSOCIATED PRESS
It's a hot, brooding rainy afternoon in Mumbai as many of us TB nerds congregate in a small meeting room in a hotel in Mumbai. The room is filled with TB experts, doctors and government officials and our conversation is predictably dull. We talk about diagnosis, treatment and drugs. But the room comes alive as India's most famous TB patient Amitabh Bachchan walks in with legendary business leader Ratan Tata. Both of them are now "ambassadors" for TB control.
16/09/2015 8:23 AM IST
SAJJAD HUSSAIN via Getty Images
While planning my column, halfway through my coffee, my editor called. He always drives me mental. "Give me something hard-hitting," he said. "Why not Har-dik?" I inquired in my favourite fake American accent, making it sound like quite something else. "You pervert," he screamed, "this government will shut us down." I said Hardik again, this time in my desi accent. "Now that sounds hard-hitting," he said. So we agreed. Hardik it was.
12/09/2015 8:10 AM IST
Hindustan Times via Getty Images
People who live in glasshouses shouldn't throw stones, or so the old saying goes. What of those who specialise in throwing stones? Perhaps they should never claim they live in glasshouses? The AAP, the moralistic 'saviour' of our polity has certainly proved this saying true. In a matter of days, it did exactly what it spent its relatively short lifetime accusing other political parties of doing.
04/04/2015 8:08 AM IST
Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Every now and then we seem to completely lose our perspective and our decency. The game becomes more than just a sport. We ridicule needlessly, engage in senseless verbal violence and, as in our most recent case, flaunt our misogyny. When Virat Kohli, India's projected saviour during its World Cup crisis, played that fatal shot and his girlfriend watched from the stands, a section of the frustrated Indian fan club was already making up their mind -- If India lost, Anushka Sharma was to blame.
01/04/2015 8:14 AM IST
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March 24 was World Tuberculosis Day. Not a day for celebrations in India if we consider that we have the highest TB burden globally with a million "missing" cases that remain undiagnosed, untreated and possibly undocumented. What's worse is that India's TB crisis -- the result of years of bureaucratic neglect and private sector disease mismanagement-- is now creating an epidemic of drug resistant (DR) TB. World TB Day then, if anything, is a reminder of the crisis ahead.
25/03/2015 1:38 PM IST
MANJUNATH KIRAN via Getty Images
The government is doing no service to women or their rights by banning this documentary. Instead it is essentially letting men in India off the hook so that this society can continue with tacitly approving a culture of violence against women.
13/03/2015 8:26 AM IST
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A society where the truth cannot even be told in stories must surely be an uncivilised one. A nation where fanatics can control a writer's imagination signals the end of our imagination as a people. An administration that voluntarily participates and colludes to violate and illegally suppress the freedom of speech of a well-known writer is no different from the ISIS. All you need to say is the word "anti-religion", throw in a few protests and the state bends to please. Freedom is our first and easiest casualty.
08/02/2015 7:56 AM IST
Subhendu Sarkar via Getty Images
So what if it's an individual award--let it be dedicated once to the ordinary Indian who works everyday to keep this country together with our faith, tolerance, commitment and taxes.
01/01/2015 7:58 AM IST
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Its time we recognise terror is our common problem, and only then will common solutions follow. The era of empty promises, of false, misleading and violent national identities must end.
22/12/2014 8:18 AM IST
ASSOCIATED PRESS
What does it mean to be gay, wearing a mask, living in an India that promises us <i>acche din</i>, smart cities, bullet trains but no freedom? What is this new concept of development that is so much at odds with every conceptual artifact of human rights, democracy or being Indian?
07/12/2014 1:36 PM IST
